MTV Is Home to the Hottest Sidewalk Show in New York

It’s 90 minutes before MTV’s “Total Request Live” begins, and despite biting November winds, Broadway is already lined with fans of the Foo Fighters and Rage Against the Machine, including 14-year-olds Adrianne Spector and Katisha Lucaina, with their homemade signs and faces covered in Foo Fighters temporary tattoos.

New York cops keep the battle for the best view of the second-floor studio window under control, and they prevent the spillover crowd packed into Times Square traffic triangles from getting crushed by cabs, when someone spies heartthrob host Carson Daly up above.

So forget about the touristy hubbub ogling Al Roker outside the nearby “Today” studios every morning. This opportunity to scream at the backsides of rock heroes and maybe get on camera to ask them a question makes “TRL” the hottest TV sidewalk in town.

Part music-video countdown and part style section, “TRL” isn’t just MTV’s most popular show; it’s also a daily video-age after-school teen center that’s helping unify the ever-fragmenting pop-music world by daring to play Dr. Dre, Korn and the Backstreet Boys back-to-back. Daly presides over the chaos with droll bemusement, even when he’s the object of the swooning.

“I don’t know if I would have screamed at a window for four hours when I was 14,” Daly says with a sigh. “You don’t ever really get used to the attention.”

Neither does perplexed Foo Fighter Dave Grohl, an MTV veteran since his days in Nirvana, or his new guitarist, Chris Shiflett, who made his “TRL” debut a week ago, when the band stopped by to talk with Daly about its new album, “There Is Nothing Left to Lose.”

“How many times do you have to do stuff like that before you stop feeling like a dork and completely uncomfortable?” Shiflett asks Grohl off-camera after they finish fielding squealed questions from fans outside.

“Never. Never, never, never. Always,” Grohl says. “The ridiculousness really translates to TV too. It’s just as dumb here as it is when you see it on TV, that’s for sure.” As Grohl suggests, “TRL” might be easy to mock for the overenthusiasm of the kids, or for the way Daly seems to glide between the lingo of Will Smith or Britney Spears, depending on his guest. But it’s also a genuine pop-culture sensation, helping launch the careers of stars of both malls and the mosh pits, and attracting upward of 1 million viewers each day, an unheard-of number for an afternoon cable show.

On this Wednesday afternoon, not only the Foo Fighters but also reticent avant-garde alt-everything fusionist Beck has stopped by for the world premiere of his new video. And to round out an impressive triple bill, the politically charged and media-wary Rage Against the Machine is doing a rare live TV performance.

Despite the modern-rock guests, the countdown has its usual bizarrely democratic nature as the only place that Limp Bizkit and ‘N Sync might ever rub elbows.

“I like to call ‘TRL’ the United Nations of music-video shows. Everybody gets represented,” Daly says after the show. “Kids nowadays aren’t like we were in the early ‘90s. Then, you were into just grunge, and you had Stone Temple Pilots or Nirvana CDs or just pop, and you had Michael Bolton and Mariah Carey. Nowadays, it’s safe to say if kids have Limp Bizkit or Kid Rock, they might also have Jay-Z or even ‘N Sync or Backstreet Boys CDs. There’s a lot more crossover now, whether it’s rock bands using dance beats or rappers sampling guitars.”

For Daly, 26, crossover has always been a key part of his musical vocabulary. The California native came to MTV in 1997, after dreaming of a professional golf career, and briefly studying for the priesthood before becoming a versatile radio disc jockey.

Daly rolls his eyes off-camera at some of the more bubble-gum boy bands, and on-air, it’s clear he’s pretty aware of how silly the whole thing can be. Yet he shares that fan-boy enthusiasm for a wide range of music and is probably the rare person who could hold such an eclectic show together.

“I spend most of my days just trying to defend the boy bands to the rockers and the rockers to the boy bands. Can’t we all just get along?” asks Daly, citing Rage Against the Machine, Beastie Boys and Kid Rock as his own favorites.

“But it’s perfect. One day I get to interview [Stone Temple Pilots singer] Scott Weiland, the next day Dr. Dre,” Daly says. “There’s nothing really hard about that.

“If Christina Aguilera is on the show, I just ask her how her life has changed, how school has changed, what her friends think of her fame. If it’s Zack [de la Rocha] from Rage, it’s a totally different vibe: ‘You’re a politically charged band; you just played a benefit for students in Mexico City. That must have been insane. Tell me about that.’ ”

For his part, Daly plans to stick around “TRL,” despite talk that he wants to return to California and explore an acting career, and that this third year on the countdown might be his last.

“It’s just cool to be in an environment where kids are screaming for something they enjoy,” he says.

“When I took the job, everybody said, ‘Stay in radio. What are you doing? It’ll be one year, and then you’ll be on a Noxzema commercial.’ I never looked at it that way. It’s a great opportunity.

“This was never something I imagined. So now, if someone says I suck or I’m too ugly to be on camera, then I’ll go back to the real world.”